From “blonde” to “Star Wars”, Hollywood must accept the accents of actors (column)

Last week, I was ready to dedicate this column to the backlash of Ana de Armas apparently retaining her Cuban accent in the "Blonde" trailer, but Warner Bros. Discovery to cancel “Batgirl” sent me in another direction. The delay was well timed: the talk of actors who can play certain roles, particularly within the Latino community, took another turn when John Leguizamo went wild over news that James Franco had been cast as Fidel Castro.

Addressing the nuances of a sensitive cultural landscape is tricky when these mini-scandals demand case-by-case assessment. Most people haven't seen "Blonde" yet (including me), so who's to judge the end result? And yes, Franco looks like Castro, but Leguizamo's point about the lack of opportunities for Latino actors is valid.

No doubt, the actors pretend to be people different from themselves. The tension in these stories stems from another fact: actors with non-American accents remain stigmatized in Hollywood, even among those who are successful with them. (De Armas and Leguizamo were unavailable for comment, but Leguizamo had plenty to add on his Instagram, below.)

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A few weeks ago, Jamie Lee Curtis inadvertently scored de Armas, her "Knives Out" co-star, when she said that when she first met the actress, she had assumed "because that she was from Cuba, that she had just arrived. I assumed that she was an inexperienced, unsophisticated young woman."

This accent bias, conscious or not, has persisted in the industry for years. "When I was very young, like 20 years ago, there was a whole conversation about losing your accent," Mexican actor Diego Luna told me this week. "They used to call it 'neutralizing,' like it was something you could just get rid of. It was a fear of understanding."

Luna called me from Mexico after finishing a media blitz to promote the upcoming Disney+ series 'Andor', where he's reprising his role as the 'Star Wars' rebel he first played in 'Rogue One ". The fantastical context of the film and the series allowed him to circumvent all the practical questions about his way of speaking. "It wasn't a decision to keep my accent. If they hire me, I come with that," he said. "But when they cast me, they clearly send the message that they try to represent a world similar to the one we live in, where people speak differently and have a rich cultural and linguistic diversity."

Since Luna and her friend Gael Garcia Bernal broke out with "Y Tu Mama Tambien", the duo have overcome the pressure to change their accents for better jobs. “I still hear about some projects thinking in this very old-fashioned way,” Luna said. “I know they are there. But they don't seem to be the majority now. I think everyone who talks to me makes sense on that. »